


Exposed

by Brightbear



Series: The Challenge of Rattrap [3]
Category: Transformers: Beast Wars
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-16
Updated: 2011-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-26 03:59:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brightbear/pseuds/Brightbear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rattrap wishes the sky weren’t so wide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exposed

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of a challenge. Prompt: Buried  
> Set at any point after the introduction of Air-Razor.

Stones clatter down the pile of rubble as Rattrap shifts his weight again. Grains of sand are being ground into his knees, working their way into the metallic joints. There’s a squawk from behind him and he spins around. It’s only a lonely hawk, a lone speck in the entire blue sky. He hopes for a second that it’s Air-Razor but at second glance, he realises it is just a bird. He keeps looking for a few more seconds before he turns back to the task at hand. There are no places to hide here. There is nowhere to run to. Far off on the horizon is a mountain range, too far away to offer any sanctuary and full of enough energon to interfere with the comms. He keeps scrabbling in the dirt and rubble, twitching at any noise he hears.

The place is so quiet he should hear any approaching Preds long before they get close. He’d just feel better about it if his blaster hadn’t been reduced to molten slag by Megatron’s ambush. He doesn’t have any explosives left either, but with so many Waspinator fragments strewn across the landscape he can’t bring himself to regret that.

He’d just be more comfortable if there were somehow less sky surrounding him. It would be nice if the terrain was not so flat and featureless. It’s not that he wants the Preds to have cover if they come back, it’s just that he’d like the comfort of a solid wall of rock at his back – or a hole which he could use to spring an ambush of his own. He is an expert in infiltration and stealth and he takes pride at being at home in the filthiest rat-hole he can find. A wide dirt plain and a blue cloudless sky feel too exposed. He can’t turn his head fast enough to watch every angle of approach at the same time.

He transforms into beast mode, finally conceding that clawed rodent paws would be better equipped for digging. Without his blaster, opposable thumbs aren’t that useful. It’s surprising how fast he goes now, earth sliding through his fingers with ease. His rodent body is not only more efficient at digging but enjoys it. In the back of his mind, he feels the urge to dig, and dig, and dig. He wants to dig until the sky isn’t so wide above him.

It doesn’t take long before his head is disappearing into a hole the size of his own body. He has to pull his head out of the hole every now and then to check the horizon, but he feels better anyway. His claws finally strike metal and he finds what he’s been digging for. He clears the dirt away until he can see the yellow fur and black spots clearly. Then he follows what appears to be a leg until he finds Cheetor’s head.

Cheetor coughs and splutters, his nose and whiskers full of earth.  
“Hang on, pussy cat,” says Rattrap. “Have you out of there ‘fore you can say Optimus Primal’s a monkey’s uncle.”  
Rattrap keeps digging, pausing even less often to check his back now. If the Preds were going to come back, they probably would have done so already.

By the time Rattrap has doubled the size of the hole, Cheetor's head and one of his forepaws have been freed. Cheetor turns his head awkwardly and glimpses the sky for the first time in several hours.  
“Oh, jeez,” says Cheetor. “Ain’t the sky beautiful?”  
“Sure, kid,” answers Rattrap automatically, continuing to work on freeing Cheetor’s other front paw.  
Either Cheetor’s too naïve to notice Rattrap’s humouring him or he’s learned to ignore it.

“The sky,” continues Cheetor wistfully. “Doesn’t it make you want to... you know? Just run and run. And then just run some more. All the way to the horizon?”  
He’s painfully earnest about it, as Cheetor always is. This time Rattrap pauses in his digging and shuffles backwards out of the hole. He looks around at the wide emptiness of the plain which has no business being that flat. He looks up at the sky, endless and exposed. He shudders and crawls back into the hole where he has a solid surface surrounding him on three sides.  
“If you say so, kid,” says Rattrap wearily. “If you say so.”

The End


End file.
